This past spring, we spent a lot of time arguing against the notion that single evangelicals should take contraception to reduce abortions. What we didn’t do, though, was talk about the positive case: if not contraception, then how should we set about reducing abortions?
That’s the question that Kolburt Schultz put to me for his blog Faithful Politics. My friend Eric Teetsel (go forth to his new blog) weighed in, as did a few others. My contribution is, well, typically idiosyncratic. Rather than address the issue head on, I tried to get beneath the surface to one of the core problems in the evangelical culture: our understanding of children.
Still, cultural transformation need not wait until we have every solution. So let me propose one sideways suggestion, one idea that comes at the question not from head-on but through the back door. I would like to see evangelical churches end “children’s church” and nurseries and keep all the crying infants in the services. If we segregate infants because they “distract us” from our worship and learning, then we undermine our own imaginative resources to welcome distractions in other parts of our lives. The posture of welcome to infants and children begins at the center of the universe, in the person of Jesus. We ought not want a more professional and more distraction-free worship experience than he does, and if we look at the Gospels he seems quite interested in allowing the little children to mess up his plans. If our worship on Sunday is a microcosm for the rest of our lives, then it seems deeply inconsistent to separate ourselves from children while singing only to claim that we want them every other moment.
Will that reduce abortions? Empirically, probably not. At least not right away. But like all problematic ethical behaviors, the willingness in our people to abort their children is a sign of our deeper dysfunctions.
